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Summary
Summary
Cleverly revealing the basics of reproduction in an age-appropriate way, award-winning Sophie Blackall has created a beautiful picture book full of playful details to amuse and engage readers.
Sooner or later, every child will ask, Where do babies come from? Answering this question has never been this easy or entertaining! Join a curious little boy who asks everyone from his babysitter to the mailman, getting all sorts of funny answers along the way, before his parents gently set him straight.
Author Notes
Sophie Blackall was born in 1970 and grew up in Australia. She received a Bachelor of Design in Sydney in 1992 with honors. She spent the following few years painting robotic characters for theme parks, providing the hands for a DIY television show, and writing a household hints column. She also had many exhibitions of paintings in galleries in Sydney and Melbourne.
She moved to New York City in 2000. Her editorial illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Architectural Digest, Town and Country, Vogue, and Gourmet. She has illustrated over thirty books for children including Ruby's Wish, Meet Wild Boars, Pecan Pie Baby, Big Red Lollipop, and the Ivy and Bean series. She won the 2016 Randolph Caldecott Medal for the Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear and the 2019 Randolph Caldecott Medal for Hello Lighthouse. Her first book for adults was entitled Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Blackall once again excels at portraying a thoughtful child with a rich inner life, as her hero/narrator finds his world upended when his parents announce the arrival of a new baby. "I have a hundred questions in my head," the boy confides to readers, "but the only one that comes out is Are there any more cocopops?" Regaining his bearings, he asks the other adults in his life where babies come from. Their gently evasive half-answers enable Blackall to unleash her special brand of elegant, pokerfaced surrealism; when the kindly but taken aback mailman indicates that he "thinks babies comes from eggs. But he doesn't know where to get the eggs," the boy imagines a cozy nest of human baby eggs in various stages of hatching. But Blackall also admires her hero's inquisitiveness, and the way he squares his parents' eventual, more scientific explanation with what he's heard throughout the day (eggs are involved, after all) makes for a lovely tribute to the blossoming mind. An afterword offers helpful narratives for grownups facing a similar line of inquiry. Ages 5-8. Agent: Nancy Gallt Literary Agency. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A little boy narrator finds out from his parents one morning that he's going to be a big brother. Just one question: "Where are we going to get the baby?" Over the course of the day, he asks the grownups in his life -- his babysitter, his teacher, his grandpa, the mailman -- if they know where babies come from. Each gives a different answer -- a seed, the hospital, an egg -- that confuses him but, as it turns out when his parents give him the real story, ends up being partially true (except for Grandpa's: there are no storks). At bedtime, Mom and Dad provide their son with a very basic, concise explanation of babies' origin: "They begin with a seed from their dadWhich gets planted in an egg inside their mom" Blackall's text is straightforward, calm, and reassuring without being clinical. Her Chinese-ink and watercolor illustrations make the most of the narrator's imaginative flights of fancy, and the cherubic, rosy-cheeked babies of different ethnicities are cute as a button, whether they're buds on a "baby tree" or swaddled, nesting doll-like, in their hospital rooms. (Cutting through all the adorableness, Grandpa keeps his kidney stones in a jar by his own hospital bed to show the narrator.) An appended page provides suggestions for adults about addressing the "where do babies come from?" question. elissa gershowitz (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
How does one go about getting a baby? A young brother-to-be ponders that question after learning an infant will be joining his family. He asks a number of people and receives a wide variety of responses, leaving him more confused than enlightened. He finally questions his parents, who tell him what he wants to know, simply and without fanfare. Engaging illustrations in Chinese ink and watercolor vary in size from large double-page spreads to several small vignettes on a page. Each response to the question stimulates the boy's imagination as revealed in the pictures: a stork making a delivery, a baby tree bursting with buds and babies, and infants hatching from eggs in a nest. The characters appear to be vigorously healthy with their florid cheeks and ever-present smiles, and the antics of the family's black cat are entertaining. Answering the Question Where Do Babies Come From?' concludes the book and contains age-appropriate responses. An appealing book for children preparing to welcome a new baby or who are simply curious.--Owen, Maryann Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"Babies love to play!" begins this silk-screen-style board book, which features simple movable parts. A cardboard-cutout infant can be removed for swaddling and comforting; a real cloth blanket can be tucked in; and a diaper folds over Baby, just for practice. Each little boy and girl pictured is big-eyed and sweet, and Gillingham includes a range of ethnicities. Alongside practical information about infant care, the best lesson of all is that though all babies are individual, each one is adorable. BABY'S GOT THE BLUES By Carol Diggory Shields. Illustrated by Lauren Tobia. 32 pp. Candlewick. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 2 to 6) Shields and Tobia bring an earthy, hip sensibility to these faux-plaintive lyrics sung by a baby with a bad case of the blues. "Woke up this morning soggy,/ And that smell kept getting riper;/ But I can't talk, no way to say,/ 'Won't somebody change my diaper?"' Mom has a snaky tattoo; neighbors are as diverse as New York City; and just like babies everywhere, this one cheers up the minute he gets a cuddle. UPSIDE DOWN BABIES By Jeanne Willis. Illustrated by Adrian Reynolds. 32 pp. Andersen Press. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 2 to 6) When the world turns upside down and babies wind up with the wrong mothers, things get silly fast. "Piglet went ker-plonk in a parrot's nest./ Porky and pink with no feathers on his chest./ 'What a funny baby, no matter how I try,'/ Mommy Parrot said, 'this chick won't fly!' " Willis's rhyming verse is jaunty, studded with nourishing words like "drey" and "carnivore," and takes a delightfully light approach to teaching animal attributes. MAPLE Written and illustrated by Lori Nichols. 36 pp. Nancy Paulsen/Penguin. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 6) Maple loves spending time under the tree for which she was named, and treats it like a sibling: lending it her coat when the weather is cold, tossing snowballs at its trunk and playing under its boughs. When a real baby arrives, Maple has to figure out what they can do together. Nichols's depiction of her patient attempts to be a good big sister might be just the thing to encourage children in the same predicament to keep at it. THE BABY TREE Written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. 36 pp. Nancy Paulsen/ Penguin. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) In this engaging answer to the "Where do babies come from?" question, a little boy whose parents tell him they're expecting can only think to ask, "Are there any more Coco Pops?" Later, he hears the first of several puzzling explanations of the process: "You plant a seed and it grows into a baby tree." Blackall brings great charm to everything she draws, and here water-colors of babies nestled on boughs, in birds' eggs and finally, in utero, sweetly and comically separate fact and fiction. ONLINE A slide show of this week's illustrated books at nytimes.com/books.
School Library Journal Review
PreK-Gr 2-After a boy's parents tell him that he will be a big brother soon, he starts to wonder where babies come from. He asks trusted adults, but his teacher, babysitter, and grandfather give him different answers, further confusing the young narrator. The child then goes to his parents, who tell him in realistic but age-appropriate language how babies are conceived, grow, and are born. Chris Patton's narration captures the pacing and tone of a curious young boy, but his reading fittingly shifts when he reads the back matter, which includes additional discussion of the subject as well as brief information about same-sex couples, adoption, and related topics. VERDICT Even without Blackall's illustrations, the text stands on its own and will be useful for parents to share with their inquiring young children.-Maria Salvadore, formerly of the Washington, DC Public Library © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
